Vivian O'Dell | USLHC | USA

Phase Transition

I was very amused to read in the article “20 years of the W and Z bosons” (Physics World, vol 16 no. 1, Jan 2003) that CERN supposedly turned off heating to “make sure that the physicists took a Christmas vacation, and maybe even relaxed.” The motivations of upper management still remain obscure and elite, but heating certainly felt like it had been solidly off that first week I was back on the job. Now that the fingers are functioning again, some physicists have even started to do non-physics things like posting on blogs… but then, the same article mentioned that management “knew that many physicists would gladly freeze to death if they thought they would be able to get time on the computers,” ahem…

On the left: My home-town is by the city of Kuala Lumpur, 3°N 101°E — asian, tropical, and unapologetically unsophisticated in how it is alive. Having a number of loving parents ensures that I am volunteered for vacations.